Tracking existing home inventory is very important in 2022.
Inventory usually declines sharply over the holidays, and this is a new record low for this series.
This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.
As of December 31st, inventory was at 294 thousand (7-day average), compared to 420 thousand for the same week a year ago. That is a decline of 30.0%. Inventory is down 5.4% from last week.
Compared to the same week in 2019, inventory is down 61.5% from 764 thousand. A week ago, inventory was at 310 thousand, and was down 29.0% YoY.
Seasonally, inventory bottomed in April (usually inventory bottoms in January or February). Inventory last week was about 4.2% below the previous record low set-in early April 2021.
Inventory peaked for the year in early September, when inventory was at 437 thousand (the peak for the year), so inventory is currently off about 32.8% from the peak for 2021.
Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube.